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That had to be the worst post ever

Have you ever done a post and while writing it, you just know it is going to be your ‘best post ever?’ So good that it makes you laugh out loud or even brings a tear to your eye while writing it?

I have composed 3 of those in the last few months and could not wait to get them published. Without any doubt whatsoever I could feel it in my bones, I just knew they would go viral and I would be the ‘next big thing.’

Guess what? They didn’t get any more of a reaction than any other piece of drivel I put out AND the traffic was even below average on a couple of them.

Really? Are you kidding me? Are you telling me I’m that delusional and have no judge of talent whatsoever? Shut the front door………

I am being facetious of course, but I really did have a couple I was proud of for being so clever and witty. I thought for sure they would be walk-off home runs but all I got was a cigarette butt in the backwash of my warm beer.

Go figure, huh? Somebody told me social might be fickle.

How to double your traffic

I am very much an ‘under the radar’ kind of guy; I have no strategy other than writing, commenting and sharing. Probably not the best sustainability model, and it sure won’t get you the traffic most seem to be crave, but it’s all the energy I am willing to expend at this point.

However, I did notice my traffic more than doubled for the month of May. Taking out the Gini factor, which seems to cause a bump every time she retweets one of my posts; my numbers almost jumped off the chart in May.

Say it ain’t so; how can that be? The only thing I can attribute it to are two posts I did in May (and no, these weren’t my epic posts I previously mentioned). Growing up bin Laden and Putting your best face forward have to be the culprits. bin Laden for the name and best face for the pumpkin ass picture; that is the only thing it can be.

Here’s the deal, in addition to my regular community, my spam count has more than doubled. Just to give you an idea, if I include spam comments, I have had 18,124 comments on 104 posts. Whoa, that averages out to 175 comments per post. You had no idea I was that popular, huh?

The question is, what happens if I let the dogs loose and approve all the spam comments? If I do it once, does that mean they have a key to my house forever more?

Don’t worry, I’m not opening any flood gates; but it is true that my spam intake really jumped off the charts for the month of May and I really do think those two posts were the culprit.

Social media doh’s, as Stan would say

Why would someone have a ‘follow me on twitter‘ button on their site if they are going to be one of those dickheads who don’t follow back? I know the whole ‘follow me, follow you’ thing is passe in twitter; but if that is your shtick, you suck a root; no, really….

There, I just had to say it and even though my words make it appear otherwise, I could care less………or I couldn’t care less; or how about ‘I just don’t care.’

Ok, we are halfway through 2012

Where are you on your goals you set for yourself this year (if you chose to do so)? Are you making the progress you expected?

Me? I have had some victories but have also had some setbacks. However, I am still standing to fight another day; so that has to be a good thing, right?

I really am under the radar; I don’t check where the traffic is coming from (which I think I can do from my WordPress acct) or Googly analytics. Maybe one day it will be important enough to start tracking it. It might be worth taking a peek……..

So much to consider when it comes to engagement. I would think external factors kept you from going viral Bill. Perhaps the “Avengers” or Mitt’s latest riveting tweet, the new menu at Burger King? Personally, I am always a sucker for the ass pumpkin!

Wow, double traffic in May? Excellent! If that’s more traffic than you want, I suggest you switch to the generic WordPress theme and add CAPTCHA to comments. Works like a lead brick for your traffic.

Sorry about the spam. I’ll try to tone it down. Perhaps I should only leave 150 comments a day?

I’m glad you linked to Jack’s blog post about your best blog post or I would have had to do that. I agree with him, there is no predicting which post will be popular. If there were a formula, we’d all be viral by now.

Not that I’m hoping you catch a virus or anything…

I’m still waiting for that pumpkin shot to be your Gravatar. If you add it and delete it today it would still probably be there till Halloween. I’m just sayin’…

I don’t see much spam here, so you’re doing a great job. A lot better than me, I almost always accept the one liners, the “great post” or the “I love your writing.” I just love feedback like that, even though I see that the name of the person publishing it is a seo company (in my world the person writing it means every single word, as long it’s something positive) 🙂

I absolutely agree with you about Twitter. I don’t do many conversations with new people, it’s mostly the same old gang, but on the other hand, I’m always here, so I’m ready for new people whenever they contact me. And I try to follow back everyone that follows me.

On the other hand, when it comes to goals, I feel that things are going great. But, I don’t have any goals other than to have a good time and be happy. And that’s going great, but who knows what will happen next week 🙂

Kind of a ‘guy’ expression I suppose; but I really don’t understand why you want people to follow you if you have no intention of following back. Or, you already have 20k+ and you decide not to follow. Just make you want to go ‘huh?’

Hi Bill,
As to your traffic increase in May, I have two thoughts: I think you writing has improved (practice is a wonderful thing) and you probably encountered some breakthrough tipping point which hopefully means continued high traffic.
Riley (always the analytical one)

I don’t often check my stats and never know who’s reading or who has subscribed. Shame on me. Huh? The only time numbers matter to me is when you’re coming to my house (I mean a party) ’cause I need to get food and probably limit or prepare for bathroom use. My sister invited the whole senior class to our house for a party once and caused thousands of dollars in damage to the septic system! HA! That’s when numbers matter if you ask me.

For the most part, if they don’t have an avatar and I don’t know them; then I’m pretty sure it’s not a ‘real’ comment. However, if it was just about the numbers I could certainly release them all and it would look like one big party.

I’m happy with the ‘real’ community that stops by and I appreciate you leaving your thoughts as well.

Maybe I’ll do a ‘best of’ and try them again……..:). Is that as lazy as lists?

Yep, you never know when whatever you have written will really resonate w/ someone. The interesting thing w/ this post is I probably had more positive comments in the retweets than I have seen in some time; some from people I just know from a distance. It was kind of cool.

You just never know what is going to strike a chord. Sometimes you might have a feeling about something, but other times it is a complete surprise. I knew when I wrote my Google+ post on the old site that I had hit it right. But another one of my posts that did well was a complete shock. Like Jack said, just keep swinging — sometimes you foul out, sometimes you hit a home run.

I remember my post about finding someone dead at their desk after 3 days got more traffic and retweets from quite a few people I didn’t know. I thought maybe death was the attraction so I followed up w/ another ‘death’ title but it didn’t draw near the traffic so I’m not sure if that was it or not.

You just never know I suppose; it depends on who has a chance to see it because it only takes 3 or 4 not to show up that can make it a good day or not.

Do you use Google reader? If so, can’t you just plop my address in there and ‘add to reader?’ This is a ‘free’ site, pretty much what you see is what you get. If everybody has that hard of a time finding me, maybe that is something I could work on.

🙂 yes, yes, I have many best posts ever. They are always doing the rounds in my head. Which makes me ponder – the posts I loved, didn’t get comments/hardly had any traffic when I wrote them. And then later, they began to trickle in, building up to a nice flow. But then I blog coz i love it. And as a traffic generation model, I like yours. Easy, simple and most important – enjoyable!

I am addicted to your blog, I realized. (nothing new for you, eh?) I actually waited to read your post as a reward for completing a project. Can you imagine? Wonder what you think of that? 😀

Hugs! May your weekend be just what you want it to be! Am off to the dentist today.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the next big thing; I have goals for 2012 but the majority are personal and have little to do with blogging. My ultimate blogging goal is to keep posting away and expressing myself and building up a library of regular blog posts that demonstrates persistence on my part.

The truth is, you only get to hear about the people who labored in obscurity for 30 years and then hit the Big Time.

You *don’t* hear about those who labored in obscurity for thirty years and then gave up.

I think — not sure — that Duke Ellington said, Keep doing what you like; if you’re any good, it may take you a decade or 30 years, but eventually you will have an audience; and even if you don’t make it at the end of 30 years at least you’ll have done something you loved doing.

At least you will have done something you loved doing………’nuff said, huh? All the other trappings that go along with this ‘stuff’ is just gravy, right.

Under this model I use, I will certainly not hit the ‘big time’ either. However, I am in this deep enough I do know some pretty cool people and do have access to them; so that is worth something to me.

That would be a hoot if I’m still doing this 30 years from now. I wonder what the landscape will look like then?

So true about the shots not going in if you don’t take them. Good to see you Mr Bell Magnet; hope your week went well………:).

Oh crap Bill, now I’m a dickhead… Yep, I don’t automatically follow all my Twitter followers back. They have to ask me to follow them. I know, I know, I’m a dickhead. But hey, I ended up with a bunch of people I was following that were not interested in me, just the numbers. Does that really make me a bad person? Don’t answer that! 😦

You are witty, I will admit. So your headlines and the photos got some attention. Okay, so some of that was the wrong kind but we still love ya Bill. So maybe not everyone knows about you and we’re okay with that. We wouldn’t want you getting so popular that you start ignoring us all now.

Either way it goes Bill I’ll keep hanging around. You’ll still have your old faithfuls you probably won’t ever be able to get rid of. Doubling traffic or not!

You’re many things, Adrienne, but from what little I know of you, I can safely say you’re not a dickhead.

And if you are, well then, I’m in great company; I’ll be a dickhead too.
I don’t auto-follow either; it’s somebody’s right to follow me on Twitter or G+, as much as it’s my prerogative not to follow them if I don’t find them sufficiently interesting.

I do end up following back a decent number of people if they come across as authentic, i.e., not just playing a numbers game. Of course, I’m more likely to fb if they engage in some way.

I concur; if she’s a dickhead, then that’s probably not a bad thing to be. One of these days I will have the cajones to call some of these people out specifically instead of making general statements; but that would probably not be too sporting of me.

I follow back about 2-3 of every 5 that show up; some I know we would never connect or engage so I don’t even bother. Having said that, I don’t have a please follow me on twitter sign at my place either…………just sayin’………..:).

You are no dickhead……….online at least……….:). I will give a hall pass to the people who are engaging and helpful, that’s when it really doesn’t matter who is following who. However, if all you are doing is push marketing and it’s all about ‘you’ but you give back very little; I’m not too interested. But that’s why we can all choose to follow whoever we want to, right?

The traffic numbers really don’t mean much to me; I just thought it odd for the month of May the spam count really took off.

I’m planning on having a great weekend and hope you do the same; good to see you.

I headed over from a RT by @adriennesmith40 to read ‘the worst post ever’. I am not yet a blogger and always researching and reading to get myself off the pot and post. Glad I did because if this is the worst post ever, I have a lot more work to do.

Hola, welcome to casa de silly; I’m usually not too serious about anything and even if it might seem I’m ranting, I’m usually making fun of the absurdity of it.

When I first started, I commented at a multitude of sites. That was when I noticed most people who did this had a blog as well. When I finally decided to get off the pot and become a ‘blogger’ too, my moniker was The Invisible Blogger because I really had no idea anyone would show up.

If you like to write and comment, I highly recommend jumping on in and getting started with a blog. I had no idea I would enjoy it like I do, but have found it to be a real pleasure.

Good luck and thanks for taking the time to stop by. Adrienne is good peeps……….:).

I love this post…. not quite the worst post! I haven’t been blogging for some time now…busy with my admission procedures..Yes, I am studying further. But I am always surprised how wonderful the usual people are. They always manage to stop by and check out whatever you’ve got to write about.

Did you check Google Analytics..maybe the usual clowns are doing a good job of spreading the word across?

I’ve noticed you’ve been sparse; I thought maybe it was because the last blog contests you were in burned you out. I’m glad to hear you are doing something good.

I haven’t checked Google Analytics; maybe I should see where all these spammers are coming from. I think it would be funny to ‘release’ them and watch what it would do to my numbers. I’m just afraid if you open it up, then they are always in.

So good to see you, thanks for the update. I hope your weekend went well.

Thanks for the compliment; the challenge is writing a witty, eye-catching title and then backing it up with something worth reading.This post was unique in the fact I had a lot of people comment positively through their retweet but they still weren’t compelled to comment. You just never know I supposed…

Great read, once again. I can clearly see where you are going with this, I usually get these ideas in my mind while writing that this will cause a tidal wave and draw hundreds of people to my blog, and that my traffic will double and I wont be able to reply to all the comments that I might get!!!!
But guess what, just like you, it never happens and all I get are those spams 🙂 I somehow noticed that for me too, spams have increased in May, isnt that strange??